You notice when someone isn’t acting like themselves.
You remember the little things that make them feel welcome.
I knew Dale Lindgren liked his eggs over medium.
I also knew he’d had two heart attacks and that his wife, Joanne, wanted him eating healthier.
On Tuesdays, when he came alone, I sometimes slipped two strips of bacon beneath his hash browns.
I knew the Miller boys loved chocolate milk.
Their mother had died in a car accident years earlier.
Every birthday, their father brought them to Gus’s because that was their mother’s tradition.
I’d put a candle in their pancakes, and the entire diner would sing.
I knew Mr. Haugen had ordered the same pancakes for thirty-one years.
Yet every morning, he’d study the menu for five minutes as though he were considering something new.
I never rushed him.
I knew the two sisters who owned the flower shop hadn’t spoken directly to each other since 2003.
